08/04/2011

Ignoring the Path of Virtue at Stourhead

Stourhead Park is one of the greatest eigheenth-century English gardens,

designed by the wealthy landowner Henry Hoare ("the Magnificent Hoare," a nickname that gave my students lots of giggles) after his return from the Grand Tour of Europe. Like so many other Grand Touring aristocrats, he had fallen in love with the landscape paintings of Claude,

Poussin,

and Dughet.

Returning after several years loaded down with precious artifacts, including rare books and paintings, Hoare decided to create an Italian landscape in the English countryside. Unlike other gentlemen of taste, he did not hire a professional landscape designer but did the work himself. He had the Elizabethan house pulled down and replaced by a Palladian villa,

and also created, over many years, an exquisite landscape garden on more than two thousand acres. Stourhead landscape garden is considered, in the "sister arts" tradition of the eighteenth century, to be both "painterly" and "poetic." It is one of the chief examples of the notion that gardens, paintings and poems are "sisters" among the arts, capable of the highest form of aesthetic expression and thus each possessed in some degree of the qualities of the others. Henry Hoare's garden, then, not only looks like a Claude painting, it also has a poetic meaning, a narrative that unfolds in time as visitors make their way around the property. The most famous of the circuit gardens at Stourhead presents the visitor with a choice between the Path of Virtue, which leads up a steep and rocky climb to the Temple of Apollo

where one is rewarded with a spectacular view across the lake to the misty, Claudian horizon, and the Path of Vice, which leads, by a short, easy downhill walk, to the pub.

I've always loved bringing students to Stourhead and I consider it one of my favorite walks in the world. But on Monday, I decided that since I know the gardens fairly well, I would concentrate on two things: looking that the spectacular collections in the house, which I had never visited, and finally getting some time for a little sketching of my own. It was hard not to feel guilty as I sent the students (and Sam) off up the steep climb while I plopped myself down in front of a hydrangea bush. But my talentless, completely untrained sketches are a major way that I relax, focus, and really see what's in front of me, and I have been missing the practice. Besides, Stourhead's hydrangeas were beyond gorgeous that day, whether seen from a distance,

in a medium shot,

close up,

or even in an amateur's notebook.

And that's why the last four photos in this post are the only ones I took myself.